Learn
From "what is a stock?" to reading the market
24 short, hands-on lessons in three tracks, about 144 minutes in all. Start with how stocks work, move on to the 100 trading plays, then learn to read the whole market and plan for a crash. Every lesson uses real prices and real companies, and every technical word on the site links back to a plain-English definition.
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Track 1 · 8 lessons · about 49 min
Stock basics
Start here if you're new. What a stock is, how prices move, candlesticks, trends, valuation, balance sheets and risk.
- 1What a stock is, and what sets its priceShares, market cap and why a $2 stock can be a bigger company than a $400 one. Buy a slice of a real company.
- 2Bids, asks and why prices moveThe order book behind every price. Place trades in a live book and watch the price move.
- 3Reading candlesticksOpen, high, low and close in one shape. Build candles yourself, then read a real chart.
- 4Trends, tops and bottomsHigher highs, lower lows, support, resistance and moving averages, on real charts you control.
- 5What a stock is worth: earnings and P/EEarnings per share, P/E, forward P/E and the other yardsticks, with real companies' numbers.
- 6Equity, debt and staying powerWhat a company owns and owes, and why debt decides who survives a downturn. Stress-test real companies.
- 7A ten-minute check on any stockBusiness, price, growth, debt, trend and crash risk in order, run live on any covered stock.
- 8Risk, volatility and position sizeVolatility, beta, the maths of losses, and how to size a position from its exit.
Track 2 · 13 lessons · about 77 min
The plays
How the published trading rules work, family by family, and how to read their record.
- 1How to read a Be The Puck pageWhat the IN/OUT call, the next move, the charts and the record on every page mean, using a live example.
- 2Moving averages, explainedThe building block of most plays here: what a moving average is, simple versus exponential, and why they lag.
- 3Trend following: why it works and when it doesn'tThe idea behind the biggest family of plays, the research that supports it, and the price you pay for using it.
- 4Breakouts and channelsBuying new highs: Donchian's four-week rule, the Turtles, Darvas boxes and the 52-week high.
- 5Volatility, ATR and trailing stopsHow plays measure a stock's normal wiggle, and how stops built on it decide when a trend is over.
- 6Momentum: own what's risingTime-series versus cross-sectional momentum, relative strength, dual momentum, and the indicators built on rate of change.
- 7Oscillators and mean reversionRSI, stochastics and friends: what overbought and oversold really mean, and why dip-buying plays win often but small.
- 8Reading volumeOn-balance volume, Chaikin money flow and the Money Flow Index: using how much traded, not just the price.
- 9Calendar effectsSell in May, the turn of the month and the Santa Claus rally: what the research found, and how to judge a pattern that might be luck.
- 10How to read a backtestAnnual return, drawdown, volatility, Sharpe ratio and calls right, in plain English, plus the traps that make backtests look better than they are.
- 11All the plays at a glanceEvery play on Be The Puck in one table: family, speed, and how often each one beat simply holding.
- 12From signal to planHow people actually use plays like these with real money: core and satellite, position sizing, and taxes in Canada.
- 13Seven common mistakesThe errors that turn a sensible play into a losing habit, and how to avoid them.
Track 3 · 3 lessons · about 18 min
Markets and risk
Indexes, bubbles and crashes, and how to position for a fall you can't time.
- 1Indexes and the whole marketWhat the S&P 500, Nasdaq-100, Dow and TSX are, why the giants move them, and what concentration means.
- 2Bubbles, crashes and the warning signsHow manias run, which warning signs have a record, and why timing a top is so hard.
- 3Staying invested, cash and bucketsWhat selling, holding and rebalancing did through real crashes, and how to build buckets.
Each lesson ends with a short quiz (93 questions in all). Read them in order the first time.
Practise
Interactive, built from real prices, new questions every round.
The glossary
129 terms, each in a sentence or two
From "adjusted price" to "whipsaw". Hover over any underlined word on the site to see its definition without leaving the page; tap it on a phone.
Reading list
The analysts' own books and papers
From Wilder's New Concepts (1978) to Clenow's Stocks on the Move (2015), with where to start.
Words you'll see most
A note before you start
Be The Puck teaches how published trading plays work and how they have behaved. It doesn't know your goals, your taxes or what else you own, so nothing here is advice to buy or sell anything.